Whose Thoughts, Whose Path…

“The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.” Henry David Thoreau

… whose life are you living? Yours completely? All yours? Send me a photo, I’ll frame it and call you my hero. I will. Just promise me it’s the truth. I am not there. Yet. Will I ever? I am trying. If Yoda was any right, we go by “do or don’t do, there is no try”. Yeah right. I’d like to challenge him on that, knowing deep down that he is right. You either jump or get ready to regret it later on. So you jump. There’s no promise of unscraped knees, know it. It will hurt, but you know you did it. You tried. What else is life about? I’ve seen people, my loved ones, growing old and wrapping themselves in the thick raspy blanket of regrets. Arms and legs hurting, thoughts acting like spoiled brats. Whose life was it after all? Theirs. Not theirs. You speak the truth and there’s no promise you won’t choke on your own words. You hang your thoughts up in magic trees and you might still trip on them. There are no promises. Take it as such. Breathe and shrug. Long and tangly, wooly, sometimes soft and other times scratchy, your thoughts will peck at you from around every corner. Every now and then you’ll realize that some are yours and some are other people’s. As long as you know. As long as they don’t become the scratchy blanket later on… as long as you still jump if you feel like it. As long as you’re not letting yourself be pushed and then tell yourself “oh but I did it, I wanted too…” No one wins, that much I know.

The one thing I’ll tell my boys. The one thing I’d like for them to put in their back pocket and hold forever. Listen to your heart, be quiet enough at times to hear the soft whisper of your thoughts, cover your ears when the rumbling gets too loud, say it how it is, tell the truth and expect to not be able to please everyone. Be fair, be true, be you. Know that it will get mucky at times.